The Empty Room

by Lauren B. Davis

  “You were pretty upset last night.”

  The blunt statement gut-punched her. It was important not to let on that memories of the night before were little more than vapour.

  “Things are piling up, you know.”

  “You had me worried.”

  “Nice to know you still care.”

  “Don’t be cute, Colleen. You said some pretty wild stuff last night. Look, I know you’d had a few, and that’s no big deal, but maybe, I don’t know, maybe you should find someone to talk to.”

  “I’m talking to you.” What the hell had she said? Snippets of talk hovered at the edges of her memory. Can’t take much more … might as well … yes, she’d been crying last night. She’d been pacing, phone in hand, crying. Had she said that? I miss you … empty life … pointless life. Jesus. “I was upset last night, that’s all. But today … Jake, I don’t know if I can take much more.” Why had she said that, again?

  He sighed. She would bet he was pinching the bridge of his nose, bowing his head. His special expressions of impatience.

  “Sorry, am I a burden? Maybe this call was a mistake. I’m returning your call, you know. I just thought … you were going to be there for me, a friend. My mistake.”

  “Babe, take it easy. I am your friend.”

  “It doesn’t feel like it.”

  “Okay, what’s up?”

  She pictured him at his desk, tie loosened, chair tilted back, Bluetooth in his ear. Maybe he was pulling on his lower lip the way he did. Amber eyes scanning the room. His eyes were never still.

  “I’m out of work.”

  “You get fired?”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Well, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t get fired. I had to quit.” Her chin was trembling and now she really was going to cry. She gulped down the white wine. Empty glass. The pretty French fairy disappeared like a burst soap bubble. “They were accusing me of all sorts of things I didn’t do.”

  “Like what? Anything interesting?”

  She knew that tone. Jake was a great smirker. It was part of his armour against the world, and she knew that, but it didn’t stop her, from time to time, from wanting to rip it off his face. Their relationship had always been like this, and worse. He’d slapped her a couple of times. She once threw a chair at him.

  “Sylvia’s been taking work off my desk and then I get accused of losing it or not doing it. I told them. She even had a bunch of stuff right there in her hand, papers Harry had left for me to make copies for his class, but she took them and when he came looking for them, of course I didn’t know anything about it and David was there and Sylvia’s grinning away and presto she produces the copies and I look like an idiot. I don’t know why that little bitch had it in for me. I never did anything to her. When she first came to the department I took her out for lunch and tried to get to know her, but she thinks … oh, I don’t know what she thinks.”

  Tears ran down Colleen’s face. She had taken Sylvia out to lunch, taken her to a little restaurant down on John Street. Colleen had ordered a carafe of wine but when she went to pour some for Sylvia, the stuck-up bitch put her hand over her glass and said, “Do you always drink at lunch?” Really? What kind of manners did that show? Colleen had only drunk a single glass and left the rest sitting on the table, which was a stupid waste, and they’d never had lunch again. Sylvia had asked her a couple of times, but Colleen didn’t trust her.

  “Hey, I’m sorry, babe.” Jake’s voice was softer now. He could be so sweet. “What are you going to do? You’ll be all right. You’ve got the money from your mother’s condo, right?”

  “I’m the legal guardian, but I have to pay for the nursing home and anything else she needs. I can’t spend her money on myself. Not until she dies. I don’t mean it like that. You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I do. But she’s, what, ninety? She’s not going to need all that money. How much is it? Two, three hundred thousand? She owes you. You can use some if you need to.”

  “I need another job. Listen, can you come over? I’m so down.”

  “I’m working.”

  “I know that. After work.”

  There was a pause. A longer one than Colleen liked. “Problem?” she asked.

  “No. Sure. I can come over for a minute. I wanted to talk to you anyway.”

  “About what?”

  “I’ll see you later, okay? Couple of hours. Around six. Take it easy this afternoon, okay? Take a bubble bath or something.”

  “I wish you’d tell me what you want to talk to me about. You sound serious.”

  “We’ll talk when I see you. I gotta go. And Colleen …”

  “What?”

  “Just take it easy, for me, all right?”

  He was worried about her; that was all. “I think I’ll take a nap.”

  “Great idea. See you.” He disconnected.

  Colleen sat looking at the phone in her hand. Several things buzzed through her head. First, she was going to have to start hiding the phone from herself. No more drink-and-dial calls. But it always happened. She’d feel down and have a drink and then the booze would lift her spirits and she’d feel like all was right with the world, but then the happy turned to sad again and she’d need to talk to somebody and the next thing she knew she was scrolling through her phone list and dialling away.

  Admit it: fewer people were answering her calls these days. She had fewer and fewer numbers in her phone list.

  Colleen clasped her hands between her knees. She looked around the room. The parquet floor under the air conditioner was water-damaged. Dust balls looked like dead mice in the corners. The furniture was variously faded, stained and chipped. The Venetian blinds on the long wall of windows hung unevenly, the slats bent in places. The light was harsh, late-afternoon, sharp and autumnal, promising only oncoming darkness and months of colder, bleaker light to come.

  When she first lived on her own, sometimes at night she’d imagine sounds in the hall, or claw-like hands reaching around the door frame. She’d dream of malicious spirits that half woke her from sleep, but held her down so she couldn’t move, couldn’t scream. The struggle to wake up seemed to take hours. Then, shaking and chilled with sweat, she’d crouch in the corner of the room so nothing could sneak up behind her. It took years before the night-terrors went away, and only with the help of her fairies. She hadn’t thought about that in ages. She glanced toward the hallway. If she let herself, she’d conjure the vision of those bony, grasping claws again. She brought her clasped hands up to her mouth and bit her knuckles to stifle a cry.

  It was just after four.

  Colleen stood and went to the shelf behind the table and chairs. She ran her fingers over the books. They were friends who never failed her. Shakespeare, of course, Mark Twain, William Wilberforce, James Baldwin, Tim O’Brien, Madeleine L’Engle, Julian of Norwich, Pema Chödrön, Celtic prayers, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, histories of various periods, Austen, Dickens, Thomas Wolfe, memoirs by people who had survived dreadful childhoods, the sagas of Iceland, Eudora Welty, Dorothy Parker, Hemingway, Cheever and Auden … They weren’t the books she wanted. What did she want? Something. Something she wouldn’t leave out in the open. She walked, a little unsteadily, to her bedroom. In the closet, in a box on the top shelf. All the books of her secret self—Drinking: A Love Story, Under the Influence, The Vitamin Cure for Alcoholism, Alcoholics Anonymous, The Easy Way to Stop Drinking, How to Change Your Drinking, Overcoming Addiction without AA, My Way Out, Seven Weeks to Safe Social Drinking, The Alcohol Cure, Cool Water: Alcoholism, Mindfulness, and Ordinary Recovery …

  She’d read them all. Tried them all. Gone to therapy even, which hadn’t helped a bit. The first therapist, who had just recovered memories of her own childhood sexual molestation, kept insisting Colleen had probably been molested as well, and that her lack of memory around the events was evidence of their existence. Jesus, Colleen had said, I remember enough bad shit, can’t we deal with that? The second
therapist (or analyst, as she corrected Colleen) was a Jungian, but Colleen generally went there half sloshed. When she finally admitted that and the analyst suggested she come back sober next week, she hadn’t returned.

  Everyone had an answer, but none that worked for her. Surrender. Fight. Take a pill. Make a graph and monitor your drinking. Did non-alcoholics need such graphs?

  She picked up the Alcoholics Anonymous book. She looked for the passage she had underlined, about the movie publicist who wanted to be a writer. There it was. Alcohol, the man said, had first given him wings, and then it took away the sky.

  She said the sentence aloud, closed her eyes and said it again. She wished she had written that line. She went to the desk under the window, picked up her journal and a pen and began to write, but it was nothing but whining and complaint, the lines on the page all scraggly. There was nothing to say except that she was fucked and yet she wanted those wings, wanted them so badly. She threw the pen on the floor and ran down the hall to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator. Next to the two full bottles, the third was less than half full. She lifted it to her mouth and drank straight and true and deep.

  Little French fairy, bonjour, encore. Restez, je vous supplie.

  The hollow centre of Colleen’s soul filled with honey, the nectar of the gods who knew the truth of all things and would, at any moment, share them with her. But then, as though she were a ship hit by a rogue wave, the room spun and her stomach pitched and rolled. She had to lie down. She edged to the couch and flopped into the squishy pillows. The room twirled. She put her foot on the ground. She was cold, chilled to the bone, and pulled the smelly old green throw over herself. She mustn’t be sick. God, that was it for today, no more drinking. She had wasted yet another day, another chance. She saw the look on Princess Diane’s face, the falling vodka bottle, the splatter, and smelled the fumes. Shame swam through her gut like an acid shark. She bit the corner of the green throw and made promises to God. Never again. She was done. She’d had her last drink. She would be better, cleaner, purer. If only she wouldn’t throw up now. If only she’d be sober now. She had to concentrate on something other than the watery, sloshing sensations in her gut. She reached for the television remote control. Oprah and her favourite things. Hair care products. iPad by Apple (a name no woman would have suggested). Those goddamn ugly boots Sylvia wore. Change channels. Law & Order. God bless Law & Order.

  She concentrated on her breathing. In and out. Stare at a fixed point. Watch the detectives … The criminal reminded her of her cousin, Liam. Poor Liam, now there was an addict, poor bastard. She wasn’t anywhere near as bad as that. Colleen felt herself drifting off. Oh, blessed sleep … In peace will I both lay me down and sleep; for thou, Lord, alone makest me dwell in safety … Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night …

  JUST KEEP WALKING

  Liam, Colleen’s cousin, was five years younger than she. A long, gawky kid with a shy smile and a floppy mop of brown hair he either hid under or blew out of his eyes, he was the black sheep of the family, the one they all tut-tutted about, starting as far back as when he was fourteen and he dropped acid, then spent the night sitting in a farmer’s field with a shotgun under his chin. He’d spent a year in the mental institution after that, where he drew thousands of pictures of fantastical birds and beasts of his own imagining. Everyone said he could have a career as an illustrator if he wanted. Maybe he did want, but he wanted to get high more.

  He was what they called a “garbage head,” meaning he’d take anything to get high, from booze to pot to pills to crack to meth. When he was around thirty he told the story of how he found a red capsule on the sidewalk and popped it into his mouth, delighted at the mystery.

  “But it could have been anything!” Colleen had shrieked.

  “That’s the fun part,” he replied.

  He couldn’t hold a job. He mowed the lawn at a golf course for a while, and worked as an orderly on the palliative care wing of a hospital, which, Colleen thought, was a spectacularly bad place for a drug addict to work. Sure enough, he was fired for pilfering opiates. He did day-labour and delivered pizzas and worked for a lawn service and a dry cleaner and a variety of fast-food joints. He got fired from or quit them all. For a while he lived with a woman, fifteen years older than he, who had four kids. If nothing else, they shared a love of the pipe. His parents, Colleen’s paternal aunt and her husband, made sure he had groceries, and when he wasn’t living in their basement transferred twenty dollars a day into a bank account they’d set up for him.

  He got clean when he was in his early thirties, and it seemed as though he might just be all right after all. He visited Colleen now and again. They went out for lunch, and although he said he didn’t mind if she had a glass of wine, she didn’t drink around him. Once she let him sleep on her couch for a week when he was between places. The second night he was there, just after they’d shared a dinner of lasagna and salad, he said he’d like to go to a meeting, and did she want to come.

  “A meeting? What, for addicts?”

  He grinned at her over his coffee cup. “Addicts and alcoholics, yeah. There are some really nice people there. You might even meet someone, you know?”

  “I don’t think so.” Looking for a date at a meeting of alcoholics and addicts seemed akin to looking for one in a mental institution.

  “Okay, forget romance. Aren’t you curious?”

  She considered this. She was a bit. Liam had been such a horrible mess six months ago. Now, here he sat in a crisp white shirt and new jeans. He was shaved and his brown hair—still floppy—was clean. His hands didn’t shake and he didn’t smell like a backed-up sewage pipe. Although he was still thin as a whippet, he no longer had that gaunt, starved look. Sores and scratches no longer marred his skin.

  “Speaking of romance, maybe you have a new girlfriend you want to introduce me to?”

  He chuckled. “I wish. But no new relationships for the first year. Although my sponsor tells me if I can keep a plant alive for six months, he’ll think about letting me get a fish.” He raised his eyebrows. “Come on, why not come with me? It’s an open meeting. Anybody can come. Be my support. What else are you going to do, sit around watching bad television?”

  And so she had agreed.

  The meeting was in the common room of an apartment building in Regent Park, a welfare housing community downtown. The floors were checkerboard pink and grey linoleum, and the walls, too, were grey. Windows looked out over the building’s parking lot and a tiny, battered-looking park in which some teenagers stood about in small groups. Trestle tables had been put together to form a square around which sat about twenty people, male and female, white, black, Hispanic, mostly in their thirties or forties, with a couple of older men and two girls who looked to be in their twenties. Everyone had coffee in front of them, or bottles of water.

  The leader of the meeting, a bearded man wearing a T-shirt with the words I’m wearing this T-shirt ironically read something called “How It Works,” which listed the twelve steps. They went around the room saying their names and identifying themselves as addicts or alcoholics, or both.

  “I’m Dave, and I’m an alcoholic and drug addict,” the leader said.

  “Hi, Dave,” they all responded.

  When they came to Colleen she looked at Liam, who smiled encouragingly.

  She flushed as everyone stared at her. She thought they appeared a little hungry, as though she had a chocolate chip cookie glued to her forehead. “I’m Colleen. I guess I’m here to support my cousin.”

  “Hi, Colleen,” the group said.

  Introductions over, they read a passage from a little black book about the awful load the addict carries around with him and how the addict lives in constant fear of being found out. “When you come into AA, and get honest with yourself and with other people, that terrible load of lying falls off your shoulders.”

  People nodded. Clearly, Colleen thought, they’d drunk the Kool-Aid. S
till, if it helped Liam, it couldn’t be a bad thing. They seemed normal enough, if a bit … hardened—that woman sitting across from Colleen with the missing teeth, the coarse skin and green-painted fingernails; the men with their nicotine-stained fingers and tattoos. One of the twenty-something girls had a tattoo—some sort of writing—on her neck, for heaven’s sake. Only the two older men—both of whom looked like retired farmers or stevedores, their hands heavy claws, their skin weather-beaten—showed no visible ink. One woman, at the far end of the tables, looked different from the rest. In her fifties, perhaps, and she wore a green cardigan and tan slacks. Her hair was pulled back into a soft bun. She looked to be the sort of person Colleen could see herself having lunch with, although she supposed a glass of wine would be out of the question.

  One after another, they spoke of the challenges of staying away from drugs or drink. The woman with the green nails said her daughter had been arrested the night before for assault. “It was really hard not to go get drunk over that,” she said, and people make sympathetic sounds. “I didn’t, though. I called my sponsor. I’m here,” the woman said with grim determination.

  Someone else talked about wanting to quit his job, but knew he’d have to just accept it, no matter how much of an asshole his boss was. One of the girls said she was celebrating twenty-seven days sober. Everyone applauded. Liam talked about how grateful he was to have his family back in his life again, like his cousin, Colleen, who was letting him crash with her until he could move into his new place with sober roommates at the end of the month.

  “And what about you?” Dave, the leader asked. He was looking at Colleen.

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you,” said Dave. He chuckled. “How you doing?”

  “I’m fine.”

  They were all looking at her. “Obviously, there’s a lot of alcoholism in my family. My father … Liam, others, I guess. So, I’m very aware, you know, I’m very careful. I watch my drinking, you know?”

  “Oh, we know,” said one of the men, and with that everyone burst into laughter.